Violence broke out in cities across Egypt yesterday (Friday) as demonstrators
took to the streets and besieged Muslim Brotherhood offices in anger at
authoritarian new powers seized by President Mohammed Morsi.

A protester cheers as items ransacked from an office of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party burn in AlexandriaPhoto: REUTERS

By Richard Spencer in Cairo

7:17PM GMT 23 Nov 2012

Headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political front, the Freedom and Justice Party, were ransacked and burned in Alexandria, Port Said and Ismailiya. Protesters described Mr Morsi as “Egypt’s new pharaoh” and said his declaration on Thursday night was a “constitutional coup”.

In Cairo, the biggest demonstrations for months filled Tahrir Square, reviving the spirit and chants of last year’s revolution against the country’s former leader, ex-President Hosni Mubarak. “Out, out,” the crowd chanted. The people want the downfall of the regime.”

Mr Morsi publicly defended his decision to make his decrees unchallengeable by law as necessary to complete Egypt’s transformation. He told a crowd of supporters gathered in front of the presidential palace that he was trying to stop a “minority” trying to “block the revolution”.

He also alleged that money stolen under the old regime was being used to fund new protests, including by "thugs" - a politically loaded term suggesting that the pro-democracy protesters were the same as Mr Mubarak's hired henchmen.

"There are weevils eating away at the nation of Egypt," he told them, insisting that he by contrast, was trying to assure "political stability, social stability and economic stability".

"I have always been, and still am, and will always be, God willing, with the pulse of the people, what the people want, with clear legitimacy," he said.

Mr Morsi, fresh from his success in negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday night, made the unexpected announcement of his new powers on Thursday.

He sacked the prosecutor general, a "remnant" of the Mubarak regime, blocked legal challenges to the committee drawing up a constitution, and said that any decrees he issued until a new parliament was elected were also beyond challenge.

He claimed to be cutting through a legal gordian knot in which Egypt's transition to democracy had become entangled, but in doing so he gave himself unprecedented powers.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of people took to Tahrir Square, fewer than at the height of last year's uprising against Mr Mubarak but nevertheless a rallying point for secular activists and politicians who feel that their toppling of the former dictator has been "hi-jacked" by Islamists.

One march was led by Mohammed ElBaradei, the former United Nations Atomic Energy Agency chief who has become a figurehead for the opposition, and Hamdeen Sabahy, a Nasserist who came third in this year's presidential election.

"I reject all these decisions," said Reem Ahmed, 32. "The country is in danger."

"The decree is basically a coup on state institutions and the rule of law that is likely to undermine the revolution and the transition to democracy," said Mervat Ahmed, an independent activist in Tahrir protesting against the decree. "I worry Morsi will be another dictator like the one before him."

Mr Morsi's handling of the Gaza negotiations, which have won him praise from across the world, including the White House, is less of an issue in Egypt, where most people are more concerned with crime and the state of the economy. Many also actively oppose continuing relations with Israel in the first place.

"I voted for Morsi last year, but now he is a dictator," said Shaabel Abu Talib, 55, a small businessman. "We have now discovered that he is also an American agent. He is playing the same role negotiating with Israel as Mubarak did."

The president in part justified his declaration as a response to calls for new prosecutions of those responsible for shooting protesters last year. He said there would be new trials of "political and executive figures".

An estimated 846 people died in the revolution, and scores more in subsequent protests against interim military rule.

Yesterday demonstrators surrounded a school near the interior ministry said to have been taken over as a police base and set it on fire with Molotov cocktails. There were further clashes nearby as police in armoured vehicles moved against the crowds spilling out of the square into Qasr el-Aini Street, which leads to the parliament building, empty since the assembly was dissolved in June.

At one stage the police fired tear gas, the smoke scattering protesters just as it did in the original Tahrir Square demonstrations last year.

"Morsi is not responding to the revolutionaries," said Faris, 27, a driver, who was wearing a bandanna saying "Remember the Martyrs". "He is making decisions based on his own opinions and of those who fund him."

Mr Morsi and his Brotherhood supporters are convinced that the secular opposition is in a minority. His spokesmen also took to Twitter, a sign of the greater political sophistication of the new leadership compared to the dictatorship which it replaced, to insist the declaration was a temporary measure.

"All constitutional declarations become void once a constitution is in place," said Gehad al-Haddad, a Muslim Brotherhood adviser.